ABSTRACT

This volume explores ideas of home, belonging and memory in migration through the social realities of leaving and living. It discusses themes and issues such as locating migrant subjectivities and belonging; sociability and wellbeing; the making of a village; bondage and seasonality; dislocation and domestic labour; women and work; gender and religion; Bhojpuri folksongs; folk music; experience; and the city to analyse the social and cultural dynamics of internal migration in India in historical perspectives. Departing from the dominant understanding of migration as an aberration impelled by economic factors, the book focuses on the centrality of migration in the making of society. Based on case studies from an array of geo-cultural regions from across India, the volume views migrants as active agents with their own determinations of selfhood and location.

Part of the series Migrations in South Asia, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of migration studies, refugee studies, gender studies, development studies, social work, political economy, social history, political studies, social and cultural anthropology, exclusion studies, sociology, and South Asian Studies.

chapter 1|25 pages

Introduction

Locating subjectivities and belonging in migration

part I|74 pages

Labouring to freedom

chapter 2|30 pages

The aspiration of a “civilised”, “human”, and “dignified” life

An enquiry into sociability, sociality, and wellbeing of migrants in an Indian coalfield

chapter 3|23 pages

Migration and the making of a village

chapter 4|19 pages

“Freedom talk of ploughmen”

Bondage and seasonal migration in East-Central India

part II|49 pages

Engendering migration

chapter 5|18 pages

Gender and migration

A contemporary view

chapter 6|16 pages

Home away from home?

Belonging and dislocation among migrant domestic workers

chapter 7|13 pages

Migration, gender, and religion

A study of Malabar migration and gendered Christian identity in Girideepam (1961–71)

part III|79 pages

Migration, memory, and longing

chapter 8|19 pages

Making sense of migration

Reflections on the contexts and contents of Bhojpuri women's folksongs

chapter 9|22 pages

The idea of home in a world of circulation

Steam, women, and migration through Bhojpuri folksongs

chapter 10|19 pages

Jaun-Yeun

Simultaneous engagement of Konkani migrants

chapter 11|17 pages

Migration and music

Incarnations of Birahā

part IV|59 pages

Negotiating the city space

chapter 12|15 pages

The Purusharthi refugee

Sindhi migrants in Jaipur's walled city

chapter 13|20 pages

“Once a migrant, always a migrant?”

Negotiating home and belongingness in the city of Kolkata

chapter 14|22 pages

The figure of the migrant as other

Experiences, memory, and the politics of belonging